


the world is

by meios



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M, Mentions of sexual assault by Templars and vague description of gore, The Gallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 07:18:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3281744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ink and tomes and bitter herbs encompass his aura, and it eases her pains, her anxieties as she presses her nose to his neck, allows herself to become completely embraced by strong arms and a stronger spirit, and the corners of Mana’s mouth twitch upwards. They press together, bodies like tree limbs at the roots, and perhaps it is raining outside today, perhaps this would be like a romantic cliché if she were to draw back and slot their mouths together. Were they in a different part of the tower or perhaps a different part of the week, she would do that without thinking, deliberately mussing his collar up for lack of any hair to grab.</p><p>And when they break apart, Mana tucks her hair behind one of her ears and tells him, “If you ever mention this again—”</p><p>“I shudder to think of what you may do to me,” deadpans Solas, and she laughs.</p><p>She always laughs.</p><p>(Circle Mages!AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world is

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for:
> 
> \- Mentions of sexual assault by Templars  
> \- Vague descriptions of gore

She glares at the older man from over the top of the latest addition to her readings, the book dusty and pages fragile, forcing her to take great care when she flips to another chapter. There is a quill stuck behind her ear, long black hair caught in the tip more often than not. And when he simply ignores her—she  _knows_  he knows, for he is too Creators-damned observant to  _not_  know—she rests the book back upon the table, crossing her legs as she fidgets.  
  
She attempts to focus, she really, truly does, but it is only when he straightens to knock a kink out of his back, dutifully ignoring everything that is only frustrating her more and more, that she stands and walks to the adjacent table, smaller, fit for a single mage. Silently, the elf grips the ridiculous collar of his robes and straightens them, frowning more when there is only a chuckle in reply.  
  
“You do this on purpose, Solas,” she says, hushed, needlessly.

The elf named Solas closes his book before turning to look up at her, smirking in the way that always gets to her, a light dusting of a flush spreading across her cheeks. She rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest, shifting her weight. He says, “How else would I get you to pay attention to me,  _da’len_?”  
  
“You’re five years older than me. That hardly calls for  _da’len_ s and  _hahren_ s.”  
  
Solas chuckles again, and her flush is quickly becoming a blush. She does not dare to look back at him, lest her feelings get the better of her. “The question still remains.”  
  
She gazes back at her table, her safe table with the safe book where she can pretend to work from a large distance away from this damned elf, with all of his smiles and lingering touches and his familiarity, his intelligence, their engaging conversations. There is a certain temptation that she likens to that of a demon when Solas is concerned: he knows which buttons to press and when, having been around her since the day she had arrived to the Gallows, a confused, terrified mess of a little girl, aged seven. He had taken her away from the nightmares that had plagued her since before she had left her clan, her older sister suffering the same ones.  
  
But there had been too many mages. Her sister and brother could do nothing to stop their Keeper from sending her away.  _For your safety_ , the Keeper had said, and she had believed her.  
  
Studying, really, was quite a thrill, to be honest. Knowledge clung to her brain with ease, stuck and growing like a tree, from the little sapling she had been all those years ago.  
  
“You already attract too much of my attention as it is,” she grumbles. He looks pleased.  
  
“I couldn’t quite hear that, Mana,” teases Solas, and closes her eyes in an attempt to calm herself, for she knows that he does this only to get her riled up. And before he can open his mouth again, she walks away, stiff and embarrassed, refusing to be played with like this. Not today, not when her Harrowing is so close that she can taste it, not when the nightmares have returned. She wishes that she could write to her brother, make sure that he was okay, for he was such a fragile mind, a headstrong soul, and a pair like that begs for attachments, dangers.  
  
She has not heard a word from anyone for eight years now.  
  
Sometimes, regardless of how awe-inspiring the libraries and the classes truly are, the Gallows can also be claustrophobic. Her dreams generally include forests, a path that leads everywhere, anywhere. She can study maps all she wants, for she will not visit any of them.  
  
She wipes at her eyes with the sleeve of her robes, gathers her books and papers, and leaves.  
  
Mana can just barely register Solas calling her name.  
  
And he finds her, later on, in one of the pews in the Gallows’ Chantry, Mythal’s words on her lips, repeating them for strength, black eyes hidden behind lids so shadowed from lack of sleep that they nearly appear to have been put there on purpose. She is pale and she is angular, all cheekbones and jawlines, skeletal fingers more properly found around a staff, perhaps, or maybe just the spine of a book, slipping glasses on as the years go, her hair glinting silver as her wrinkles overtake youthful beauty.  
  
Solas takes a seat beside her, does not touch or speak, and she does not falter under his gaze this time. She had been caught off guard earlier. That is all. But when the words begin to stammer together and the hand closest to him turns over, palm up, waiting, he takes it. They twine their fingers together and squeeze.  
  
“ _Ir abelas_ ,” he whispers, and she smiles some. “Did I go too far?”  
  
Mana shakes her head. “I am… especially prickly today,” she murmurs back.  
  
“And you’re not sleeping.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“What’s troubling you, then?” asks Solas, and this: his voice taking kindness and weaving it into compassion, concern, and spreading it to his fingertips like magic, warmth, silk to the touch, every single quip forgotten by his tongue.  
  
She tells him of the murmurs in her head when she sleeps, or when she tries to, and she tells him of how it feels to be something akin to a snake knot, just one serpent amongst too many others, attempting to wriggle out of the pit that she is stuck in. She tells him about how she does not hate the Circle, perhaps the Gallows, but not the Circle, and that she misses her siblings, misses the forests, bare feet in the dirt and flowers in her hair and watching her brother hunt and flip out of trees, mimicking his mentors. She tells him of the little ones in the dormitory, listening to her stories and slumbering to memories of old; she tells him of how she has walked the Fade in her dreams at points, how she has met him there, how the two of them had spoken, but she wonders, she wonders if any of that had even been real?  
  
And he tells her that it had been.  
  
And he tells her that the forest is around her.  
  
And he tells her that everything is real, even if it is inside of her head.  
  
Mana side-eyes him, expecting to see him laughing, but there is nothing of the sort, and he is still holding her hand. Solas squeezes once more, and she returns her gaze back to her thighs.  
  
And his lips are across her knuckles and she bites the inside of her cheek, and she moves to hug him and he is already there.  
  
Ink and tomes and bitter herbs encompass his aura, and it eases her pains, her anxieties as she presses her nose to his neck, allows herself to become completely embraced by strong arms and a stronger spirit, and the corners of Mana’s mouth twitch upwards. They press together, bodies like tree limbs at the roots, and perhaps it is raining outside today, perhaps this would be like a romantic cliché if she were to draw back and slot their mouths together. Were they in a different part of the tower or perhaps a different part of the week, she would do that without thinking, deliberately mussing his collar up for lack of any hair to grab.  
  
And when they break apart, Mana tucks her hair behind one of her ears and tells him, “If you ever mention this again—”  
  
“I shudder to think of what you may do to me,” deadpans Solas, and she laughs.  
  
She always laughs.  
  
And when she awakens the next day, her Harrowing commences, and she glances at the Knight-Captain, older than she, but not by much. Perhaps as old as the Hero of Ferelden, if the stories had been true, but he looks older, in his eyes, in the way that he frowns at her as if she is a petulant child. Mana does not have it in her to glare at him, for he has been more merciful than the others, keeping as many of the Templars off of the women, some of the men, as he can keep track of. She knows of many who had had their screams unreported or muffled, missed by the Knight-Captain on his patrols. She knows of many who had been Silenced, many who had been made Tranquil.  
  
Meredith wields the brand for things much less serious than assault.  
  
The Templars that had brought her to the chamber shove her forward, causing her to trip, and when she hits the ground, she hits it hard enough to elicit a nosebleed, her head having rebounded against the stone. Mana clutches it, magic immediately coming to her fingertips, vacuuming the blood, easing the pain.  
  
When she looks up, there are swords pointed at her, the Knight-Commander in the foreground.  
  
“For pity’s sake, I was fixing my damned nose!” she shouts, the words echoing throughout the room, gathering at the center of the dome and leaving her ears ringing. The elf stands, regardless of the blades with their tips at her neck, a few pressing too much, breaking the skin, and, if anything, this only makes her back straighter, her head high.  
  
Orsino advocates. Meredith argues.  
  
Her Harrowing commences with venom in the air.  
  
And the demon at the center of the forest, surrounded by fire, by red water, appears to her as Solas firstly. It cuts itself open, disembowels itself with the blade of a staff, and it blames Mana for it all. Then there is her sister, her brother, her Keeper. Blaming, dead, staring at her, and for a moment, she is tempted to cry, to show fear—  
  
Fear.  
  
She attacks with an onslaught of electricity, enough to temporarily exhaust her, forcing her to hide as she downs the Lyrium potion in one go. It mimics the Creators with the voices in her head, and she screams in fury as she cuts it down, going through the movements, going through the words, the methods.  
  
There are corpses of lesser demons in the clearing, and they bend to her will, like the books had told her they would, and soon enough, the demon is defeated, the magic in the air deflating and vibrant all at once. She is left blinded, exhausted, her temporary comrades falling around her as she does too.  
  
The voice that cuts through her as the blindness worries away is one of ice, of fear, and it sounds like the Knight-Captain for a moment, but it is too boyish, too high-pitched, but then it is not. Everything is in a tunnel, underwater, incomprehensible and soiled. The voice asks,  _How did she even do that?_  and there is no reply.  
  
She sleeps for what feels like a moment, too, after that, but she opens her eyes to candlelight, an unfamiliar mattress beneath her, Solas reading at the end of her bed with his legs curled up under him. Mana says his name, slowly, softly, and the book in his hand forms a cloud of dust from being shut so quickly.  
  
“Where am I?” she mumbles, sitting up. He kneels down in front of her and brushes the hair out of her face as he replies:  
  
“Welcome to the next level.”  
  
Mana stares at him, and there is a smile on his face, crooked but there. Her chest swells a bit. “So I passed?”  
  
“You passed.”  
  
A bark of laughter and he is under her, her arms wrapped around his neck. It is over and it is done and she repeatedly tells him in hushed whispers,  _Thank the Creators_ , her plainclothes loose and plain, rather itchy, and out of the corner of her eye, her new robes—black as night, the belt silver like the stars—rest at the end of the bed, opposite where Solas had been lounging.  
  
His hand curls into her hair.  
  
Her hands curl into his skin.  
  
There is peace.  
  
And peace is broken all too easily, all too quickly, and the stars are obstructed by smoke when the bombs go off, and the Templars scatter throughout the Gallows, cutting down any mage that gets in their ways. They Silence and they scream, and if the fires do not get people, then blades will, stray spells will, fear will.  
  
Fear.  
  
She grabs a staff from one of the fallen, glancing back at Solas as he retrieves another for himself. He nods, quiet now, focused like chess and words. They move through the prison, opening doors and finding survivors, escaping Templars as if their lives are a game of cat and mouse.  
  
Fire is deafening. This is something that is often glossed over in stories. There is only so much magic that she can manifest at a time, though, and the smoke chokes her when the approaching Templars do not.  
  
They call her a monster. She shows them what monsters truly are.  
  
The dead rise, and they turn their blades on their living comrades, confusion lacing the soldiers’ movements, perhaps their hidden faces. Solas freezes them solid. He kicks them and they shatter. Diamonds.  
  
And there is a shout, pained, when they reach the courtyard at last, lungs blackened and breaths short. Mana spins around to see Solas falling to the ground and she cannot hear herself scream, but she feels her throat tear at the force of it.  
  
There is enough electricity to actually cook the body when it falls, and Solas is struggling above the pool of blood that slowly collects along the cobblestone. He waves away her assistance, claiming that it is just a gash to the arm, nothing life threatening, but Mana insists on taking his good hand, forgoing the staffs and running.  
  
The battle is louder than the fire. She sees the Champion of Kirkwall twirl her weapon, the staff blade shining crimson, and that is enough to force a sprint out of her. Gritting her teeth, jaw set, and they move far too quickly, far too suddenly.  
  
She is led by Solas now, Fade Stepping when he can, and Mana can see the soot on his face, a tiny, neat cut in between his eyes as he looks back at her. He squeezes her hand. They run and they run.  
  
They run and they run and they are not caught.  
  
They are not caught, not even when they finally collapse at the bottom of a large tree, and Mana’s legs ache even as the adrenaline continues to pump through her, and Solas says something, pants it, rather, and she does not hear him.  
  
For she is on him now, mouth against his, bodies trembling against one another, helpless against their collective relief— _Alive, alive, we are alive and real and the Circle has fallen_ —and her hands cup his face, thumbs rubbing senseless nothingness into his skin. Her body screams when she breaks away to breathe, eyes catching his, and the next kiss is just as hungry, just as rushed, and they have time to be slow, they have time to explore and memorize and savor. But now is the time to act, the time to succumb to each other as touches grow to be more, robes being opened, and she catches his hands, squeezes through the callouses and the forming blisters.  
  
The kisses are shorter, open mouthed still, but faster, hurried until both of their lips are bruised, until they can only touch fantasies, wet dreams of bodies warm under them or over them, connecting and synchronizing and her nerves are on fire.  
  
“Where do we go?” she whispers, voice cracking.  
  
“Anywhere,” he murmurs. Their foreheads are pressed together.  
  
“Can we—?”  
  
“Find Clan Lavellan?”  
  
“ _Yes_.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Mana is my necromancer. She is the youngest sister of Flidais and Fergus. I headcanon her as a Shapeshifter as well, but that's a story for another time. In another timeline, she is the Inquisitor, but she's not in my canon. 
> 
> Mana, aka Macha, is a goddess of war, life, and death in the Celtic pantheon. Also the goddess of cunning and sheer physical force. She is known as the Crow or the Raven and was said to have worn a cloak of raven feathers. She also often appeared as a crow or raven. Queen of Phantoms, Mother of Life and Death.


End file.
